Tom Poti fights Scott Gomez: the video

Tom Poti has had just a handful of fights in his NHL career. Or a fistful, I guess. The Capitals as a team almost never drop the gloves, especially this season, with Donald Brashear gone and John Erskine often sitting up in the press box.

But if ever there was a time when you'd want your "finesse" team to fight in the playoffs, I guess it'd be trailing at home, in the third period, down a game and needing a boost, and with a chance to send one of Montreal's best offensive weapons into the box for five minutes.

And yet Scott Gomez actually invited Poti to drop the gloves, which is just so odd. In case you've forgotten after those heroics from John Carlson and Nicklas Backstrom...Gomez gave Alex Ovechkin a shove amidst some post-whistle festivities, perhaps intending to discover if he's really as sturdy as everyone says. Poti stepped in to say please do not touch my captain in that manner. And then people started punching each other.

Poti punched Gomez a lot more than Gomez punched him, though it turns out that Gomez was the one who requested they exchange blows.

"I was on the ice for a while, there was a little scrum in front of the net," Poti said after the game. "I think me and Greener and some of the other guys knocked the goalie over, and Gomez pushed Ovi, and I pushed him back at the end. And he just said let's go, and I said all right.

"I saw him pushing Ovi, so I just kind of wanted to push him, let him know I was there, and you're not gonna be able to push [Ovechkin]. And he kind of jumped me a little bit and was like let's go."

Not sure that was a strong tactical move. Gomez fired up the crowd, took himself off the ice, got battered over the skull, and made Poti a hero for one of the first times in weeks.

"I thought it was great," Bruce Boudreau said. "First time I've seen Tom in a fight. And I think that the players rallied around it, everybody patted him on the back. And we don't have a lot of fights anyways, but it told us something about how much he wanted to win. And I thought after that, even though our power play is struggling beyond struggling, that it gave us life."

Poti definitely landed more; way to step up Tom. The defense was sloppy and careless, from all players, but this was definitely the emotion that was lacking in the first couple periods...let's carry it to the Frenchies in Montreal.